Well, it's back to music reviews — for the moment, anyway.
J-Pop wonder Hikaru Utada released her fifth Japanese studio album, entitled HEART STATION, earlier this year on March 19. Long before that time, I had officially shed all interest and ties to the few pop artists I had formerly enjoyed (finally realizing the stupidity and vapidity of the genre), so I did not exactly salivate at the news of Hikaru's release. Which is why I'm reviewing the thing now, roughly three months later, as opposed to being extremely slow on the uptake.
A telling tidbit, at any rate, since an admirable or merely respectable musical endeavor would not have prompted any sort of mention here.
Why do I dislike HEART STATION?
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The title may have prematurely given it away, but… can you identify the people in the below photograph?
They appear to be a Japanese visual kei group, right? Like Malice Mizer or Dir en grey? Right???
Ummmm… no.
他們都是中國人。
Yes… may I have the honor of presenting to you 銀色灰塵, or Silver Ash, the first-ever Chinese visual kei rock band.
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(Suitable prologues to this post: my reviews for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and New Moon. The current subject is Eclipse, third installment in the series.)
Hands down, this is perhaps the worst book I've ever read.
Excerpt from back cover:
In the dead silence, all the details suddenly fell into place for me with a burst of intuition.
Something Edward didn’t want me to know.
Something that Jacob wouldn’t have kept from me.
Something that had the Cullens and the wolves both in the woods, moving in hazardous proximity to each other…
Something I’d been waiting for anyway.
Something I knew would happen again, as much as I might wish it never would.
It was never going to end, was it?
Indeed. When will it ever end?
And referring back to the post title, here is the reason I thought Eclipse was "inappropriately" titled, in the most acute sense of the word:
to eclipse
- (transitive) Of atronomical bodies, to cause an eclipse.
The Moon eclipsed the Sun.
- (transitive) To overshadow; to be better or more noticeable than.
The student’s skills soon eclipsed those of his teacher.
Um, excuse me? This miserable excuse for a novel is incapable of overshadowing anything, unless you count that talking-hooded-monkey-assassin short story that my brother wrote more than a year ago.
…
Oh, wait, now that I consider it… nope, even talking assassin monkeys are 500 times more entertaining and better-characterized than this load of shit.
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Wow. Do mine eyes deceive me? Or is this another ultra-impersonal review?
依然范特西 (Still Fantasy) is Taiwanese superstar Jay Chou's (周杰倫) seventh studio album, officially released September 5, 2006. Because I absolutely insisted on purchasing the CD+DVD version from YesAsia.com by mail order, the CD arrived just two days ago, about three weeks after I initially made the order.
Hahaha… you just gotta love the U.S. Postal Service…
At any rate, sorry for the lateness. Just humor me and allow me to ramble on a while longer.
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Bwehhh… I'm running out of worthwhile subjects to blog about. My personal life's still as stubbornly miserable and hopeless as ever, so I suppose it's time for another review!
The American rock band, Evanescence (their official U.S. Web site, by the way, is simply beautiful), released their second studio album, The Open Door, on October 3, 2006. My brother purchased the album for me last Christmas (the first present I've received from him in a decade, it seems), and now I shall endeavor to spread the joy.
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